Sunday, October 31, 2010

Fire Needs Oxygen ~ Science Sunday

As we started carving our pumpkins this week I remembered that I’d found an experiment we could do along with the hollowed out pumpkins. We ended up rolling our science time together with our Bible time and also our pumpkin carving time…and managed to kill three birds with one stone! Gotta love that!

Before we made faces on our pumpkins, but after we scooped all the yuckies out, we put a small tealight in our pumpkin, lit it, and then put the top back on our pumpkin.

Question of the Week…

What would happen to the candle flame when we put the lid back on the pumpkin?

Items we used for this experiment:

~ a pumpkin

~ a tealight candle

~ lighter/matches

Predictions and Experiment…

Each of the kids made a prediction about what they thought would happen…and not a one guessed the real answer. They thought it might blow the lid off the top of the pumpkin, start it on fire, or worse. :)

We put the lid on, waited about a minute and when we pulled the top off again…the fire had gone out!

The Nutshell Reason…

Fire needs oxygen to burn. Since our pumpkin was essentially sealed {we hadn’t carved out any facial features}, the oxygen was cut off. Once the oxygen is used up, the candle goes out!

After the Experiment…

After the experiment was over, we finished carving out our pumpkins and watched the candles burn {since they had plenty of oxygen now!}. Each of the kids also drew a picture on the back of their experiment sheet to show what happened during the experiment and why.

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I am a mom to 4 children and wife to a wonderful man. We homeschool all four children, and my days are spent trying to keep up with them all…and the house…and life in general.

My passion is teaching my kids and helping other families in their homeschool journey. Working with children has always
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way to share ideas and resources with other families all over the world. The last few years has brought speaking opportunities at blogging conferences, homeschool groups, and also homeschool conventions.